its 2 ways of getting the job done, those are quiet big smd capacitors/resistors and lots of access I think it can be done with a soldering iron with a small tip fine, but hot air is a alternative solution

On this picture yours would be number 1 or 2 from the sizes when you are dough number 5 and access is restricted by bga chips or other caps then its just too hard to use a iron tip

Hot air is nice and is increasingly a requirement as electronics miniaturize, but you can get away without it doing these sorts of components. You're better off saving some money for a binocular microscope to be honest.

totally agree working with a microscope is like riding a bike and driving a car

yawetaG wrote:

dionb wrote:

Something tells me I'm buying a hot air gun for this.

Hot air soldering station. Not a hot air gun, if by "hot air gun" you mean the tool that can heat a large surface, because using that on a circuit board can be a good way to quickly strip it of all components. 🤣 😵

A heat gun is more than enough to solder such SOJ40 ICs nicely, though I'd install sockets instead.

gdjacobs wrote:

dionb wrote:

Something tells me I'm buying a hot air gun for this.

By all means, get one if you want. It's hardly required for some simple caps, though.

The caps were no problem, it's the SOJ chips with no pads sticking out that I'm stuck on.

Use good flux and drag solder the bitches. A little bit of braid to clean up if you have any bridged contacts.